Unity To Buy 'The Lord of the Rings' VFX Studio Weta Digital In $1.63 Billion Deal (reuters.com) 22
Hmmmmmm shares a report from Reuters: Unity will buy Weta Digital, a visual effects (VFX) studio known for its work in movies such as "Godzilla vs. Kong" and "Avatar" in a $1.63 billion cash-and-stock deal, the companies said on Tuesday. The deal would help Unity, which makes software for video games and animation, tap into Weta Digital's technology and talent to develop VFX tools and focus on metaverse opportunities.
Weta Digital was founded by film director Peter Jackson of "The Lord of the Rings" fame and has won several Academy and BAFTA Awards. It is known for its animated characters such as Gollum and Caesar from "Planet of the Apes." Unity, which made the software behind the popular mobile phone game Temple Run, will roll out tools for artists and developers across a number of industries, including film and gaming. [...] Weta Digital's Academy Award-winning VFX team will remain a standalone entity known as WetaFX, and is expected to become Unity's largest customer in the media and entertainment space, the companies said. Weta FX will license back the technologies and tools from Unity, sign an annual agreement worth $50 million and a contract for commercial services, they added.
Weta Digital was founded by film director Peter Jackson of "The Lord of the Rings" fame and has won several Academy and BAFTA Awards. It is known for its animated characters such as Gollum and Caesar from "Planet of the Apes." Unity, which made the software behind the popular mobile phone game Temple Run, will roll out tools for artists and developers across a number of industries, including film and gaming. [...] Weta Digital's Academy Award-winning VFX team will remain a standalone entity known as WetaFX, and is expected to become Unity's largest customer in the media and entertainment space, the companies said. Weta FX will license back the technologies and tools from Unity, sign an annual agreement worth $50 million and a contract for commercial services, they added.
Temple Run? Seriously? (Score:1)
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Not disagreeing, but which ones would you have chosen instead?
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Valheim is made in Unity.
Wasteland 2 (Score:3)
OP got modded down, but I honestly think he's got a point.
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Manifold Garden. Spiritfarer. Dorfromantik.
So many better examples that Temple Run...
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Headline: Unity buys WETA VFX studio (Score:2)
Unreal Engine is better (Score:2)
Sorry but this isn't going to help them catch up to Unreal Engine. What is Unity's response to Nanite and Lumen technology? They have none. I've never seen a Unity demo that beats Unreal engine, and now with the mind blowing tech in Unreal Engine 5 .. Unity is left far back in the dust. The only thing Unity might have over UE is in ease of use to for someone without much experience to quickly make something .. which explains why so many fools are making crappy games in it. I really hope Unity takes graphics
Re:Unreal Engine is better (Score:5, Insightful)
Though I'm myself using Unreal Engine and don't plan to go back to Unity any time soon, it would be terrible for all of us if UE turns into a quasi monopoly when it comes to easily accessible engines.
In my eyes it was Unity being rather competitive to UE that forced Epic into making licensing conditions for UE4 more favourable for Indy developers over time. Without that, they'd probably still ask for a monthly free. And with Unity becoming insignificant we might go back to something like that if there's no good alternative around any more, leaving us stuck on whatever engine version was the latest before the licensing conditions changed.
The crappy Unity games are most likely because of it's vast market place where you can buy all kinds of assets and throw together your "asset flip". But UE has the very same potential. With its market place growing larger and larger you'll see plenty of low quality UE4 and UE5 games in the future.
Heh? (Score:2)
UE is not better by default. Wether it's better or worse, depends on your use-case. Naturally. If you're a small indie studio and you want a single tool that covers all aspects of your pipeline including build & compile, Unity is just about perfect. Final performance and cutting-edge fidelity isn't a priority in such a scenario. It's not by accident Unity has become so popular.
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Most games in Unity Engine are cartoon like games. There is no connection to even trying to attempt to have anything to do with Unreal.
I really hope Unity takes graphics seriously
I hope not!!! Then the fun about making games in it and playing them would completely be lost.
Every engine has its use and target audience, as well as development environment and as final product.
which explains why so many fools are making crappy games in it
No one forces you to play a crappy game. But you brought me to an idea. N
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"Graphics obsession" and realism. None of the good games already listed developed in Unity would have existed in a "realism is the only thing important" kind of world. People are obsessed with the first two, and supposed success aka a winner is how we rank everything else. e.g. Cryengine.
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I started to play "3D" graphic games in the late 1980s.
One was a tank battle game with 7 levels, I think name started with A ... in an SF world, where every level was on a different planet. Antares perhaps?
The next one was: Elite.
I think the first game did not even eliminate "hidden lines", Elite did.
If the game gets you sucked into it, the graphics, especially the "realism" does not matter at all. What matters is the "feel", if I hit a control, does the game react?
Look at world of warcraft. The only things
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Both do some 'realism' survival simulation and while their graphics aren't great, they're good.
Though I suppose it depends on how you define realism. To me realism means simulating a virtual world to be as accurate as possible in some of its aspects. And that's usually just some math that runs in a background which can be done with pretty much any game engine if the developers understand physics and math well enough.
CryEngine is a piece of shit to work with for anything else but
"metaverse" (Score:2, Insightful)
focus on metaverse opportunities.
Goddammit. "cyber"-everything was bad enough but this metaverse bullshit needs to be strangled in the crib like a Hitler-Stalin-Mao Franken-baby.